RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-free-speech-rebirth-at-berkeley-1544226807

The University of California at Berkeley reached a settlement Monday with campus conservative groups who had sued over its speaker policy. This agreement helps conclude an ugly chapter in the university’s history and goes a long way toward restoring its free-speech reputation.

After much-publicized controversies involving protests and controversial speakers, the College Republicans and Young America’s Foundation sued Berkeley in April 2017. They claimed the university was relying on an “unwritten and unpublished policy” that gave administrators broad discretion to “restrict the time, place, and manner of any campus event involving ‘high-profile speakers,’” including on the basis of the speaker’s viewpoint. Their main concern was that administrators would impose security restrictions or fees so extreme that they would reinforce the heckler’s veto.

We’ve seen no hard proof that a secret policy existed. But it’s fairly obvious why these conservatives feared Berkeley wouldn’t have the guts to protect their rights. The chancellor’s office installed a $9,000 emergency exit for staffers to escape disruptive demonstrators. And the university hit rock bottom in February 2017, when it cancelled a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos after masked agitators threw Molotov cocktails and caused $100,000 of damage.

Carol Christ became chancellor in July 2017, and unlike predecessor Nicholas Dirks she has refused to reward protestors’ threats and antics. Last fall she spent $600,000 on security to ensure Ben Shapiro could speak unimpeded. Berkeley has since hosted Heather Mac Donald, Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens, Rick Santorum, Dennis Prager and other conservatives— at no cost to the student groups who invited them.

In Monday’s settlement, Berkeley reaffirms that it won’t consider a speaker’s viewpoint in deciding on the time, date, place or security for an event. Students can host speakers for free in classrooms or student government-run facilities. And if student organizations choose to use auditoriums or bigger campus venues, security costs will be determined based on criteria listed in a newly published fee schedule.

The settlement sets the expectation that Berkeley will treat speakers and students equitably and transparently. Even better, it sends a message that protestors can’t use the threat of mayhem to price Berkeley’s conservatives out of exercising their First Amendment rights.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272160/conservatives-triumph-over-free-speech-hating-uc-matthew-vadum

Conservatives scored a major legal victory against UC Berkeley which has agreed to compensate Young America’s Foundation and Berkeley College Republicans for trampling the First Amendment rights of conservative speakers and students on its campus.

“Young America’s Foundation is thrilled that, after more than a year of UC Berkeley battling against the First Amendment rights of its own students, the University finally felt the heat and saw the light of their unconstitutional censorship,” said YAF spokesman Spencer Brown.

“YAF’s landmark victory for free expression—long squelched by Berkeley’s scheming administrators who weaponized flawed policies to target conservatives—shows that the battle for freedom undertaken by YAF on campuses nationwide is a necessary one.”

The Trump administration previously weighed in on the side of the campus conservatives who argued UC Berkeley’s restrictive policies violated First Amendment free speech rights and the equal protection and due process guarantees in the Fourteenth Amendment.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a statement of interest on behalf of the two groups. The department “will not stand by idly while public universities violate students’ constitutional rights,” Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand said at the time.

UC Berkeley’s hostility toward free speech is well-established. The school appears in the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s (FIRE) annual list of the ten worst colleges for free speech. Berkeley has a “yellow light speech code rating” from FIRE because it restricts speech, denies students accused of misconduct the “right to challenge fact-finders,” and denies students accused of sexual misconduct the right to counsel.

The administration at UC Berkeley only pretended to adhere to the First Amendment’s speech protections. When conservatives have been scheduled to speak on campus, the administration typically didn’t forbid their appearances. Instead, it made the speeches inconvenient to the point of impossibility, for example, forcing students to use venues a mile off campus or at times when students couldn’t attend. Berkeley also often required non-leftist groups to hand over thousands of dollars to defray security costs, a requirement not rigorously or consistently imposed on left-wing speakers or groups.

An aggressive crackdown on non-leftist speech came after Berkeley officials—emboldened by an Antifa mob blocking a Feb. 1, 2017 campus appearance by firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos—decided to formalize viewpoint discrimination in the school’s policy on speakers.